I HAVE no idea what the noise is when it wakes me. The sensation of a bug hitting my skin followed by a tingling after-effect occurs repeatedly on my forehead and cheeks. I swat it and roll over to catch enough sleep for the day. The sound intensifies and the little irritant continues to fly into my head. I flap my arm in the air and my forearm is stung. I coddle the wound and grow loud and upset. "Wake up! Captain! The Great Deku Tree requests your audience and you'd better comply! Hey! Listen you little log!" The loud voice needs to go, I decide, and wrap the pillow around my head and moan and become wretched. "Would you wake up!? Get out of bed! Why are we relying on such a lazy bum?" The rudeness is not welcome in my home but I just want to sleep, I want to ignore it until it goes away. I do not recognize the voice. I do not know where they are standing. I unwrap my head. The Great Deku wants to speak to me, it is said. I prop myself on my arm and swing my legs to hang from my bed carved from heart of the massive stump from which the whole interior of my home was hewed. I yawn and stretch my arms and neck all out, then slowly lower my head to see a fairy lit a brilliant cerulean in the wan light of dawn. It flies right into my nose and then does it again and again. I bellow and tumble to the floor. Terrified, I scramble as it chases me. "Excuse me! The Great Deku has requested your presence you little monkey! Relax!" I paw a hefty walking staff whittled and carved from an old growth tree bough and smash the fairy across out my window. It leaves a glittering trail out into the leaves of the oak leaning close to my home. I stew the reality of my surroundings for a second as the sleep drifts from my eyes and mind. The fairy had been the same as the one from my dream. I had batted the little thing back into the forest. "Oh no." The fairy flies back in through my front door and right into my eye. It burns my eyelid then pulls away and flies and shocks me all over the place. I knock one of my pots to the floor with a sweeping arm. I fall to the floor and clap my hand onto the biggest shard and wield both it and my big staff, cornered and angry. "Why does the Deku Tree want me?"

"As if I should know! The Great Deku is wise beyond either of us." It flies right to my forehead before I can even swipe my arms wildly. "But every one makes mistakes eventually I think." Her voice echoes inside my mind as I hear the familiar fairy chime. "Wait," I say lowering my arms, balancing and looking at the wings flitting on my head. "I can hear you speak."

"Of course, we are partners!"

"But you're annoying."

"Oh truly?!" She flies onto the back of my hand and shocks me terribly. I drop the staff and it falls onto my foot. I crumple and clutch my throbbing bare toes. I feel the spark on my ear and she yells right into my skull: "WE ARE PARTNERS NOW AND EVERYTHING ELSE IS IRRELEVANT TO OUR TREMENDOUSLY IMPORTANT MISSION." She flies from my ear and hovers above my doormat. I get up and walk to the carved portal with the handspun fibre curtain flapping inward with the odorous forest breeze. "Alright. Tremendous. Ow."

"Good. I am Navi the Fairy, denizen of this forest, one of few answerable directly to the high magical guardian spirit of this forest, the Dekumekuna. Your guardian has requested your presence in our forest's sacred grove, and has asked that I spiritually couple with you in order to lead you there. It is a pleasure to meet your acquaintance, Captain of the Kokiri." I rub my eye like I would a bug bite. It stings venomously. "Nice to meet you too."

"With formalities concluded, let us alight. Immediately." She flies out and flits around at the ladder. She actually rings out into the air like a bell. I pull my tall doeskin boots up leaning on the chiseled wall and then decide to pull my old leather gloves on for the hike. As I'm tightening my belt and making sure the fasteners are tight on the treated leather pouches, checking the little bottles, rope. I slide my folding knife in the holster and snag my lighter and lamp in the two loops. I shuffle to test everything's place and security on my person, jumping once and then bending to every way to stretch and become limber. I barely remember to lash my compass to a belt loop while I head to the door. I lift the curtain with a forearm and walk under it, and when I stand erect outside Saria begins hooting from below. "Hey! Captain! Oh! OH! What!?" She is still making a commotion as I descend the ladder. She is at my boot when I'm at the bottom rung. "Captain, is that fairy with you?"

"She is."

"She is! Oh man, Captain that's huge! This is the greatest day!" I get to the ground and Saria is transfixed on the fairy. "Well Captain, will you introduce us?" The fairy hovers beside my head in front of Saria's eyes. "Well, uh, this is Navi."

"Communicate to her my full title, I will not have my introductions to be so lacking in truth."

"Sorry, this is Navi the fairy. She works for the Deku Tree." She begins yelling but I remember that Saria once told me that Gild would become indiscernible when she would focus too much on something else, and I learn she is right. "She's taking me to the Great Deku's meadow, the Deku Tree wants to see me." Saria's eyes light and expand out of their lids, her pupils revealing their white border. She smiles huge and turns to the fairy with an open hand in front of her face that she sends across. Navi alights onto her finger and Saria moves it up and down, shaking her whole being. "It is a pleasure to meet you, Navi the fairy, honored retainer of our forest's sacred guardian, and partner to my best friend in the whole world." Navi visibly brightens and flies back into the air and around my head with a gentle bounce. "I do like this girl very much."

"She says she likes you."

"Well I like her, too. Captain how did this happen? When?" She gasps, as if she desperately needed oxygen as the realizations came. "Oh you'd get lost on the way to the meadow without her! Yeah that's right, only fairies now the way. Oh that's so wonderful." She claps her hands to her face, gasping through them, and they are visibly shaking with excitement. "Oh this must be tremendously important then! The most important! I can't keep you any longer, you have to go now!" She pushes me back and goes and sits on a stump besid the trunk of my home. She pulls her ocarina out and flutters her breath into a few times to toot dust and any particulate matter within right out through the finger holes. "I'll be right here. Go and go fast, Captain, you lazy bum." Another comment from Navi about how likeable Saria is. "Alright, well I'll see you. Be good."

"You be good, Captain. Go."

I CREST the hill with the fairy hiding up my sleeve. The day is in full motion now. Everyone is out and seeing to their enjoyment and responsibilities around the village. Sid the Distribution Manager hangs the fresh fish on the racks, Mat my neighbor pulls the crabgrass from the turf outside of Mido's house. People have been stopping me all day and Navi is tired of the introductions. When we get to the avenue of apple trees constantly in blossom that demarcates the beginning of the path to the sacred groves, Mido standing alone at guard fires his hand into my face. His hand and spread-legged frame is perfectly still and framed by the deep colored tree trunks and the gorgeous canopy of high blossoms pale like the moon. The only things moving in the scene were blossoms tumbling to the earth, and the top of Mido's cap flapping in the sweet wind surging from behind him down the avenue. "Stop. What possible purpose do you have in this direction?"

"The Great Deku Tree summoned me." He lowers his hand and wavers bodily.

"What? What?! The Great Deku Tree summoned you!? Nonsense, total lies." Navi flies from my sleeve and into the air.

"A fairy!? What!? Captain when and how did you receive a fairy partner?! Tell me immediately."

"Mido just let me through, this fairy is my guide to the meadow."

"Absolutely not! No not until you get the rifle you left out of the western woods. And even still you'd be woefully unequipped for the world beyond my guard." I sigh hard right in his face. Navi positions herself right next to my ear. "Press the issue further, we must hurry to the Great Deku's meadow."

"You understand this fairy?"

"Yeah. Mido seriously, I'd only be able to come out of my house this morning with a fairy because of the Deku Tree. He's father to us all and your spitting in his face."

"Excellent confrontation Captain."

"The Deku Tree wishes to see you, but he wishes that I keep this community together and working in harmony. As such I, Mido, Supervisor of the Kokiri, command you to do your civic duty and retrieve the tools you left in the forest before I consider allowing you passage."

"Captain this becomes more ridiculous the more I listen. This individual is far too zealous in his duty. This task cannot be obstructed, especially not by some uppity Kokiri. Use your superior stature and physique now and knock this fool out."

"Alright, Mido. I'll go get the rifle and the axe."

"See to it that you do, Captain." He crosses his arms and hurumphs as I walk away and the fairy loses it. "How could you waste time on an errand with such an important task looming?"

"We'll be better off with the gun. Just in case. Preparation." My argument satisfies Navi and she returns to my sleeve. "Let us continue, then."

AT THE village's western edge a man named Hani stops me to talk. "Off to collect more wood today Captain?"

"Just getting the tools I left yesterday."

"Oh well you don't have to go far to get them. The Know-It-Alls brought them out for you when they surveyed the particles this morning."

"Oh they didn't have to."

"Yeah well apparently the particles are way thin near the forest edge today, they had everything collected so no one could run the risk out there. The particles haven't been good all for a while now. Last week a whole bunch of mushroomers working the south woods nearly passed out and had to spend five hours at Saria's."

"Yeah I heard."

"It's crazy, some people think they can play the game, but the parts of this world that don't have enough particles will kill us dead if we find ourselves there, but there's nothing to play there's just out there dead and in the village alive, you know?"

"I know Hani. I'll see you later okay?"

"Yeah alright. You going to the Know-It-Alls?"

"Mhmm."

"Well I'll be seeing you then."

"Be seeing you."

"Could you tell Saria if you see her before I do that we're still on for the band rehearsal?"

"Sure."

THE BURNING sweetgrass in the Know-It-All's home renders the air thick on the hill the barrow stands atop. It is the only home of its kind in the whole village, necessitated by a lightning strike burning one of the traditional husks to ash, the number of years ago of this occurrence never properly remembered when the topic arises. Saria insists it was one hundred. I knock on the thick old door covered in little signs scrawled by hand detailing facts related to various disciplines: methods of efficiently mending leather, which mushrooms were inedible and why, proper stretching procedures. I see the lights inside obstructed by moving shadows and hear a flurry of noise and chatter far behind the door. The door flies open so fast that it sucks wind. "Captain! It's good to see you my friend. I take it you are here for your woodcutting stuff? I kept it right here at the door for you in case Mido bossed you into going into the forest to get them today. The particles are bad today you know."

"Yeah I know. Thanks. I just need the gun."

"Right, right. Just the gun? What are you getting up to today with just the gun?"

"It is not his affair, please just get the weapon and let us go."

"I'm going to the sacred groves to see the Great Deku Tree." I learn now that fairies are capable of sighing. "Oh. Oh my the Dekumekuna how exciting. Listen the groves are actually deceptively dangerous you know. They're positively awash in spiritual energy and excess magic. Who knows what's in there? Other than the fairies of course but they're so small and live in the canopies. Who knows what they miss?" The fairy sighs again. When the small figure falls to silence, he picks up the long slender rifle from behind the door. He pulls the bolt back and checks the chamber before laboriously returning it home. "I see you cleaned it recently. I'm glad to see you didn't use those duck down dusters like the others do, they leave terrible little feathers like no ones business."

"Thanks." I take it in both hands then sling it over my shoulder.

"Oh hey I actually have something for you if you're going to the grove. Come in come in." I cross the threshold into the densely odorous dim home. Tinn, the youngest Know-It-All Brother and an important part of the three brothers earning the sassy title from the rest of the village, runs deep into the barrow's depths with palpable energy. Standing in the foyer waiting I can hear him rifling through all matter of things in the unseen depths of his home. In a room to the right where the sun spills from I can hear the scribbling of another brother alone with only parchment and ink, facts and histories as company, not to be disturbed in his dalliance with all recordable information. The other brother is likely up in the tallest tree near to the village as he always is watching the spore blooms and measuring them against the past and the projections he notes the day before at the foot of the tree or on his lawn with his pipe. Tinn runs right out of a dark room, the wind of his running sucking papers from their piles behind him and sending them flying all about him like flat spirits performing a parade behind him. "Tinn please." The brother exclaims hearing that which he works all of his days on flap onto the floor around the house. "Sorry, sorry. Here it is though, Captain." He holds up to me a twenty-inch shortsword in a cracked cured leather scabbard and matching aged belt. I lift it out of his hands and turn it over in my hands. I pull it clean out of the scabbard to examine it. Its brass crescent crossguard and cursive knuckle-bow have been polished excessively of skin oils and wax for generations while the metal wore under countless nicks and scuffs. The wrap on the hilt was a refurbishment now victimized as well, its past shade now unknowable in the presence of its pale goldenrod, a result of an environment of the forest outside and the hands that held it constantly enveloping the homespun plant fibers. I tilt the sword in the light from the next room and inspect the single amethyst gem set in the gross guard by four prongs that form the shape of a star. Various shades of purple play on the inside of the rough cut stone. I run my finger in the single thick fuller in the middle of the ellipse blade before sheathing it again. "It's our oldest."

"I can see that."

"Well it isn't in the commune. We get to keep it here because it's not practical for hunting, so you're all right to take it for today."

"Where did this come from?"

"Well Till thinks it was for melee combat but there isn't much indication for when we would have used it. It's an odd thing really, it could've come from outside too but the amethyst is a very traditional Kokiri gem."

"Thought emeralds were." Navi stings me from inside my sleeve to goad me to return focus to our task. "Well anyway, I appreciate this Tinn. I have to hurry, I've kept the Deku Tree waiting."

"Alright I'll be seeing you Captain. Oh actually one thing. Could you ask the Great Deku if he can illuminate some of the major shifts in the forest? Wilt says the spore plumes are shrinking drastically, and the particles are conversely dispersing at the forest edges rather alarmingly. People are starting to notice, I'm sure you heard about those mushroomers last week. They were only one hour south of the village. The particle clouds used to be prolific even beyond the forest, so much so that we could even stand in the outside world in some places. It's all very alarming. We may even have to move into the groves, or maybe even the lost woods. The Deku Tree hasn't held audience with any of us for so long, so since you have the opportunity to inquire, I hope you will do so."

"Yeah, I'll ask for you Tinn. Be good."

I'M MAD at Mido before I even talk to him. He stands under the blossoms with his arms crossed just like I had last seen him, as if he'd not moved or altered his position in the universe once since that time. "Why did you bring the rifle?"

"It might be dangerous in the groves."

"What is that sword in your belt? All the hunters are out today, all the blades should be gone."

"The Know-It-Alls had it and gave it to me. I need to pass now."

"Well I won't allow you. The particles are low today you know."

"Not in the groves and you know it."

"The order stands Captain, I've decided to start reigning the community in. The forest grows more dangerous by the day and I won't stand for unnecessary danger."

"Mido there won't be any trouble I won't be able to handle with the rifle and I brought a spin-charm." Mido holds his resolution in his face and beams it to me, getting into a slight defensive squat. I think about hitting him with the club of the rifle before I hear the fairy whisper it in my ear. I have a much more tangible communicable feeling after, one related to a grand umbrella over my life I sighted in the tree yesterday. "Mido, please. This is the closest thing to being a part of this forest as I've ever felt." His squat deepens for a second but he rises again with wider eyes that he ensures to squint again. "Fine," he says "but be back for dinner." He sidles once and turns out of my way. Our eyes meet for a second and he squints again at me. "I'll be back for dinner."

"Be good." I pull the bolt and drop a shell in, and then I slam the bolt back home again.

THE MEADOW circles the Dekumekuna perfectly, as if the birch trees and oaks were maintaining distance out of respect and fear. The forest being what it is, the truth may not be altogether removed from conjecture on the nature of these things. The colour of the grass and the flowers seem saturated in supernatural light as the blades and petals stand perfectly still, despite the Deku Tree's canopy casting shade down over the whole area. There is silence here that seems to be a quality of the air itself, a calm natural to everything in existence here. I finally look upon the Dekumekuna with my own eyes and find myself unable to decide how to continue. It is as a colossal pillar of life reaching into the sun, hoisting a small sky of leaves and fractal boughs. I've often been told that the face of the Great Deku was actually a mass of convenient tree gall, composing a moustache, eyebrows and a bulbous nose. Viewing it in reality now, there is a sense of intentionality to everything concerning this being. I believe everything about this single massive thing in the world has some magnitude of will committed to it or within it. Navi flies from my sleeve into the air between the Deku Tree and I. The sound of her wings ringing in the air as they flit is the only noise in the whole meadow. "Great Deku, I have returned with the young Kokiri. What do you want of him?"

"Navi…thou…hast returned" It is a voice from my mind that speaks for the Deku Tree. The invasion sets my teeth on edge. "Young Captain…listen please…to my words…and deliver them consideration. These nights passed…through the waning and returning of this moon…your dreams have been haunted by dark figures and oppression. Yes…these nightmares plague you…as the forces of darkness…encircle. Their presence…like taint in water…affects those sensitive to it. Verily…thou hast felt it." The fairy turns to me expectant. "I have, Great Deku. Last night I dreamt of a storm at a castle wall, and a black tank." There is a noticeable hesitancy in the Deku, a terseness that snaps when his voice surges back into my mind. "Yes Captain…these nightmares…and the other disturbing happenings within this forest…all are related to the coming storm. Now Captain…the time has come…I wish to test your courage…should you be willing. I…have been…cursed." Navi becomes hysteric, ringing in the air and spinning. "What!? Great Deku why have you not told me this?! This is terrible!"

"Be calm…energetic little Navi…all will be well. Our friend Captain…may yet be capable…through his courage and cunning…of lifting this curse. Dost thou will to risk…Captain? Dost thou have…requisite…courage?" Navi flies to my side and I feel her stare on my face. "Yes" I say to the tree as though it were right there though it actually stands too far to humanly hear me. "Then come." Suddenly and violently, a section of the bark under the nose-form gall began to split and shrink, morphing and withering until there is a large abscess from the roots to the moustache. The darkness within is impenetrable and oppressive. While I focus upon it, it seems to grow out and mutate, to engulf slowly the world of light surrounding. I begin walking and I hold the rifle in both hands, tempted to check everything about the firing mechanism and the bolt and the rounds loaded, but knowing they are in order. I steady my pace and exhale. I inhale, think of the three notes, fwee fwee fwee, just like Saria plays them on her ocarina, and then exhale again. I repeat this all the way, until I reach the towering entrance into the dark. I gaze up and the Dekumekuna speaks again for the last time. "Trust in one another…little ones. Navi the Fairy… must impart wisdom…to illuminate. Captain…the Courageous…you must steel thy self…and sally forth…to dispel. Now…proceed." I fix my gaze into the darkness and lift the rifle stock to my shoulder. The fairy's light cuts the shadow and pours blue light over the walls. My boot heel thuds onto the solid wood once and I am proceeding before I can realize. I am sallying forth.